One of director Ronny Yu's first releases, The Occupant is a mish-mash of genres that fans have come to know and expect from Hong Kong movies. This time out, we have a combo of a romantic comedy mixed with a ghost film. The end results aren't anything great, but the film squeaks by just enough on the charm of its' stars to produce a decent viewing experience.

Cantopop singer Sally Yeh stars as Angie, a Canadian college student who travels to Hong Kong to work on her senior thesis about supersitions in China. Low on cash, she seem to have lucked out in finding a luxury apartment for a pittance, until she fins out that the flat's former occupant is haunting it. Along with her friends, Hansom (Raymond Wong) and Valentino (Chow Yun-Fat) -- who are also both vying for her affections -- Angie consults a spiritualist (Lo Lieh) to get rid of the ghost.

Even with the otherworldly overtones, The Occupant plays out in many ways like a standard romantic comedy. The triangle between Angie, Hansom (a nerdy salesman), and Valentino (a tough cop) plays out via many cliches of the genre. Though surprisingly and refreshingly in a Hong Kong romance movie with a pop star as one of the leads, there is not a single scene of characters running down a beach in slow-motion while a ballad plays in the background. The movie as a whole is as fluffy and safe as your favorite pillow and won't open your filmic boundaries in any sort of way, yet it still strikes a good enough balance that it doesn't become sickly-sweet pablum, either.

And that's a good thing, because, frankly, the ghost scenes are downright ridiculous. Even considering that this is a 1984 Hong Kong picture, the special effects are absolutely atrocious, to the point that any scares they were trying to conjure up soon turn into unintentional laughs. The "ghost-busting" and eventual resolution of the spirit "problem" makes no sense at all, even considering the schizophrenic base nature of Hong Kong ghost movies. But, really, unless you're a nit-picker of a higher power who dissects each and every aspect of a film, The Occupant is fast and breezy enough that Hong Kong movie fans will find at least one or two things to enjoy here.

RATING: 6